Utilizing Digital Twin to Create Personas Representing Ovarian Cancer Patients and Their Families

Khushboo Thaker, Vivian Hui, Peter Brusilovsky, Daqing He, Heidi Donovan, Young Ji Lee

Abstract: OvCa patients and caregivers perceived challenges in online health information seeking. The HELPeR recommendation system utilized digital twins to create personas reflecting real-world OvCa patients and caregivers. The aim of this study was to describe the creation of digital twins and demonstrate their use cases in the study. Digital twins of OvCa patients and caregivers were created by triangulating multiple sources, including online cancer forums, direct interviews with patients and caregivers, domain expert input, and clinical notes. 10 personas were created for both OvCa patients and caregivers who had a variety of cancer trajectories and information interests. These digital twins present a potential solution for training artificial intelligence models at the initial phase when there is a scarcity of user information.